ASUU Votes to Change Utah Man

Nov 9, 2013; Salt Lake City, UT, USA; Utah Utes fans show their spirit during the game against the Arizona State Sun Devils at Rice-Eccles Stadium. Arizona State Sun Devils won the game 20-19. Mandatory Credit: Chris Nicoll-USA TODAY Sports

So we all know now that ASUU voted to change the lyrics to Utah Man.

I wrote about the vote this morning including a link to the resolution and the lyrics of Utah man.  Follow that link to read that if you haven’t.

Now there are going to be a lot of yelling to take place right about now.

Officially my position is this, that this song is essentially the only tradition we have.  I think that we can understand that man has grown to have a greater meaning.  I also think the Coed line is awful.  Not only is it just silly, but legitimately sexist.  Plus the term coed has such a porn meaning now.   And it wasn’t the original line anyway.

But then there was one person on Twitter who made me at least consider even this position.  Her name is Taylor Cella and on twitter goes by @taylor_mckell97.  I don’t know her personally but if you follow Ute bloggers the last name is familiar to you. (BTW I just saw on her timeline she’s 17.  It always makes me feel good to see bright young people like this)

In any event Ms. Cella had these tweets:

"If the song had originally said, “A Utah woman am I” would men be comfortable singing that? If that was the tradition?…it was written in the time when there were only men sports at the U- to support men sports, not women’s.If that was the intention, I would totally support it, but it wasn’t."

Now if you can put the hysteria down for a minute, contemplate what she says.  If this song was Utah Woman, I don’t think any of us men who are up in arms about this right now would be ok with that.  In fact it’s so bizarrely unthinkable, it’s not something any of us men have to deal with.  Essentially our demand, and quite frankly mine by my own position above, is that we just tell her to get over it and we swear we mean her too, really. We Promise.

There is more that a little bit about how this change happened that I don’t like.  But if it’s going to at least ask us to address Ms. Cella’s position, well then maybe this is all worth while.

I don’t think there is any harm in having that conversation.

So a special thanks to Taylor Cella for being the one person in all this to calmly and rationally show the other side and allowing me to discuss it here.